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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Lament: 'Where are we to go?'
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
DEMOLITION NOTICE --
George Kochaniec Jr. © News
HEBRON, West Bank -- "This market is built on land stolen from Jews in the Arab riots of 1929."
The sign atop one of the tiny Jewish enclaves in this predominantly Palestinian city typifies the hostility of two peoples who live so close to each other that their "front lines" are measured in feet.
Some 500 Jews -- many of them fanatical ultranationalists -- are surrounded by 130,000 Arabs in a tinderbox of religious and political passions.
It was here that Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler from New York, massacred 29 Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews and Muslims, before he himself was gunned down.
Goldstein's grave is a shrine to Jews who believe so devoutly that God gave them this land that they refused to let their children go to school in bulletproof buses, even after a 10-month-old girl was killed by Palestinian gunfire. Only last month did they change their minds (see related article).
After the 1994 massacre of Muslims at the tomb, it was suggested that the Israeli settlers be evacuated. But Israel's then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin refused, fearing that a right-wing backlash would topple his government. And though Israel transferred four-fifths of Hebron to the Palestinians as part of the Oslo peace process in 1997, the downtown area with its four Jewish enclaves remained under Israeli control.
Consequently, about 30,000 Palestinians still live under Israeli rule. They spent much of the past year under curfew while the settlers were allowed to move freely in the Israeli-controlled zone.
Israeli troops stationed here are charged with protecting both communities from each other. But the Palestinians say the army protects only settlers while doing nothing to protect them from settler rampages through the Arab market or settler land grabs on the outskirts of Hebron.
Human Rights Watch agrees. An 82-page report issued last year, titled Center of the Storm: A Case Study of Human Rights Abuses in Hebron District, found that Israeli forces were responsible for the most extensive abuses, including excessive use of force against unarmed demonstrators, unlawful killings, indiscriminate and disproportionate fire in response to Palestinian attacks (see related article), and a consistent failure to protect Palestinians from attacks by settlers.
"Jewish settlers in Hebron are responsible for frequent abuses against Palestinian civilians," it said. "Israeli authorities, especially the army, rarely intervene to stop or prevent settler attacks. The settlers, who are not subject to curfew and closure restrictions, regularly beat Palestinians, attack their homes and businesses, and shoot and stone Palestinian drivers.
"Settlers have also targeted independent observers, humanitarian workers, diplomats, and journalists during attacks that largely go unpunished."
Israel's response to allegations of human rights abuses is that such measures are necessary for security and will continue until the Palestinians halt terrorist attacks.
Jews and Palestinians have lived in the city for decades, and both worship at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and his wives are buried.
Hebron is quiet now. There hasn't been a curfew since the beginning of the year. But Palestinians living outside the city continue to lose their homes and their land to the inexorable expansion of two Jewish settlements: Kiryat Arba and Harsina.
A Christian Peacekeeper Team of Canadian and American volunteers monitors the land grabs and says they have escalated to the point where Israel has confiscated more than a third of the Hebron district.
Israeli bulldozers are most active in the Beqa'a Valley east of Hebron, demolishing homes, razing orchards and cutting large circles in the hillsides flanking Route 60, a bypass road for settlers built eight years ago. The Palestinian homes within those circles are being demolished to make way for settler homes.
"There is collaboration between the settlers and the army all the time," said Greg Rollins of Vancouver, British Columbia. "Army bulldozers do the home demolitions. Just yesterday, 17 new demolition orders were issued."
Most of the Palestinians living here have title deeds dating back to the Ottoman Turks. The legality of these deeds is rarely contested by the courts. But Palestinian land is still confiscated for "security reasons," because it is too close to the highway; or because it is deemed to be "unused," thereby becoming Israeli state land; or because the zoning has been changed to make it a "green belt."
Homes are demolished because they were "built without a permit," though they were there before the settlements, or because they sit on "agricultural land" that permits no structures. Some Palestinians have even been charged with "trespassing" on their own land.
"There are fields between the two settlements where settlers refuse to let the Palestinians plant or harvest their crops," Rollins said. "If they do this successfully for three or four years, the land can be confiscated as 'unused.' It's all done with the cloak of legality, but it's blatant theft."
Arjan el Fassed of LAW -- The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights -- concedes that Palestinian property owners have almost no chance of beating a legal system that is stacked against them. Of 76 demolition orders fought by his organization's lawyers last year, only five were canceled.
"Even that is no guarantee the homes will not be demolished," he said. "Anything that stands in the way of a settlement or a bypass road has to go. If a court rules in favor of the property owner, they change the law. If property clashes with municipal zoning, the municipality wins."
Atta Jaber, his wife and four children are living in their third home, surrounded by the rubble of two previously demolished houses. First the Israelis confiscated his 15 dunums of land (a dunum is 1,000 square meters), leaving him only the land where his house stood. Then the bulldozers came to get rid of the house.
He rebuilt it only to have it torn down again. He rebuilt it again but has received another demolition order. His brother, who lives not far away with a family of nine, has received one, too. The access road to their properties, which overlook Route 60, has already been bulldozed shut.
"Where are we to go?" asked Jaber. "We have always lived here, and our parents, and their parents before them. I was here long before the Israelis. How can they come and just take my land?"
As his second home was being destroyed in August 1998, Jaber thrust his 4-month-old son at the Israeli commander saying: "Here, you take care of him because I can't anymore."
He was arrested for "assault by infant" and spent 12 days in jail before a lawyer provided by Rabbis for Human Rights won his release.
A mile up the road from Jaber's home, a settler called Nati has taken possession of a hilltop near an Arab home and is living in two freight containers while building a stone house. The high court has issued an eviction order, but the army has not carried it out, and Nati continues to chase Arabs off what is now "his land" with a hoe.
Rocky Mountain News photographer George Kochaniec Jr. and I try to enter the settlement of Harsina to get his side of the story but are chased off by a rock-throwing Ethiopian guard. One rock hits Ahmed, our driver, and another damages his car.
So we trudge across an Arab vineyard to reach Nati's freight containers. He's not there, but we are accosted by a hostile group of settlers, one carrying a machine gun.
"Who owns this land?" I ask.
"It belongs to Abraham," says one. "Even if you're not Jewish you must know your Bible."
"If you're not Jewish, we cannot talk to you," says the one with the gun. "Please go."
February 18, 2002
Send your questions to international
editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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